Tuesday, September 15, 2015

(Risus) Scavenger Hunt: The Next Generation

After a long hiatus, we finally got in another session of Illuminati University, powered by Risus.

In our last episode.... Actually the last episode's actual play was lost to the degradations of time. We formerly introduced Milktruck Mastadon, hard-rocking caveman from the future, and Mary Kate Hanaher, well before she introduced her stubborn sass to John Wayne. There were ninjas dropping from the ceiling, coffee addicted Nazi zombies (again!), and the group foiled a plot by the German nihilists running Ambercrombie and Fitch to take over the world.

After years of playing, someone finally made it to their Sophmore year (and in one calendar year, to boot!)

It's September, so to rally school spirit and bonding, the student government was sponsoring a scavenger hunt. Our team of four consisted of:

The group walked up to the table, expecting some heinous list of items to find,varying from 0 to a billion points, when they were handed a simple blue index card with three items on it:

Blue Chalk

Drinking Vessel of a God

13 strands of tiger hair.

Piece of cake????

First off blue chalk

The quickest way to obtain blue chalk was to go to Tannenbaum's Uni-Mart (re: convenience store) and snag some up in the paltry stationary section, but much to Mister Bipp's confusion, they didn't hit the "free" campus shuttle out to the location, but rather, they leisurely strolled up into the dorms. There, they went into Tannenbaum's room, unlocked his built in closet to reveal a magic portal: the side door of a convenience store.

Having the most powerful position in the company Poorly-paid assistant manager at Uni-Mart (4) has its privileges

Of course, no one realized that there was a robbery in progress as they waltzed through the portal. Immediately, Tannenbaum was nose to snub nose of a .38 revolver. One robber had been waving that pistol around as a pair were cleaning out the register and scratch off lottery tickets.

Keith Stone smoothly navigated around the Quikie-Mart Mexican stand-off to check out the beer cooler. Mister Bipp was aghast with the violent American tendencies. Professor Pittleman tried an ill-timed creepy Fat Albert motivational speech using Bill Cosby Fanatic (1)... which was a completely different cliche today than when he earned it.

The robber shot Tannenbaum in the face... but he was alright.

Pittleman assessed the situation, calculated the trajectories of the.... ooooohhhh COFFEE!!!!! For awhile, the Professor was under his own cannibalistic impulses, sucking down every sweet drop of java from the station. Thank god it wasn't pumpkin spice season for the creamers... THAT would be embarrassing.

Tannenbaum wanted to try his Novice Martial Artist (2) in revenge of his new facial piercing, but Mister Bipp had pulled his miniature golf putter out, rolled terribly, and the golf implement ended up lodged in the figure skater's groin.

The gunman slowly backed away, loudly suggesting to his partners that it might be a good time to leave.

Keith Stone grabbed a 30-pack of Keystone Light, and struck up a lovely conversation with a co-ed trying desperately to hide from the robbers.

Mister Bipp had had quite enough of trying to fit in with Proper British Gentleman (3), and decided to go full blown violent chimp to stop the robbery and prevent any more gratuitous embarrassment to Tannenbaum. He climbed to the top of a shelf and began chucking canned goods at the robber. Creamed corn beaned the gunman and he fell to the tile.

The moneyman behind the counter grabbed his bag and dashed out the door. Bipp followed and hit him in the parking lot with a can of pre-cooked hamburger patties.

The scratch-off dude hit a spot of rough luck, as he got tangled by the rolls of tickets and found himself immobilized, leaning up against a rack of Little Debbies.

Tannenbaum wanted this finish, so he chucked one of his dollar store batarangs, as he is a Clumsy Batman Wannabe (3), rolls an 18, and promptly kills the man with excessive force.

The video cameras would be incriminating, if it weren't for good old Keith Stone, who had commandeered the cameras for some innovative Ladies Man (3) documentary filming in the office with the co-ed.

The police came, statements taken, floors mopped, and Tannenbaum finally strolled over to the stationary aisle and picked up a three pack of blue chalk.

Blue Chalk Obtained! And still faster than a trip to Wal-Mart!

For the drinking vessel of a god, they had a few options to play with:

The Swim Team had one the league title last year and the trophy was known as "The Poseidon Cup"

There was bound to be some former IOU alumni that were gods who had left a sacred flagon on site one of the supper clubs, frats, or mah-jong society buildings.

They could break into C.T.H.U.L.H.U. (time traveling for the sake of studying history), steal a time machine and go back to ancient Rome There were gods aplenty back then and the Colosseum had tigers, right?

Of course, the solution was much easier: They could avoid the wrath of C.T.H.U.L.H.U by letting Prof Pittleman weird science the hell out of the Galactic Parcel Service truck they had up on blocks in the student parking lot.

Yeah, that's a thing, too.

They had ignored this for a few episode for the spacecraft was still there, with hundreds of tickets covering the windshield.

Pittleman went to town, rerouting the failed direct current couplers around the fried nuclear alternator, replacing the ion coils with flamethrowers and rewiring the interface through the microwave. The toaster on board exploded, but the engines couldn't get power.

Then the campus police showed up.

They threatened towing the vehicle, especially for violating the "No Car Maintenance in the lot" rule, but by another rule, a boot needed to be placed on a wheel first, and this vehicle had no wheels!

Keith Stone, quickly asked, "Hey, can we have a jump?"

The campus police pulled out a portable set of portable jumper cables, plus another set attached to the police golf cart.

With a flash of lightning, and a tiny *pop* the GPS spaceship disappeared, along with the golf cart.

Welcome to Ancient Rome:
The quartet of students, and two police officers arrived outside ancient Rome unscratched. Bipp commandeered the golf cart and they went into the city. In his best British Gentleman Latin, the Chimp asked some members of the Legion were he could find Tigers, and with something lost in translation, was directed to an all male-brothel. Bipp did some research there and came out with a small satchel of "tiger hair" just in case it could count. The rest of the group did not judge.

With a few better directions (now in English, as the GPS truck offered the same universal translating software as a TARDIS would, they reached the Temple of Janus - full of archways, corridors, and key.... stones. Keith was adored as a god and he took his drinking vessel home with him, right into the Beer Cozy of Satan.

While in Rome, the group stopped at the Colosseum. While Bipp tried to see the Tigers, Keith Stone and Tannenbaum began defacing with bricks of the building with Keystone Light and Bat-symbols.

A guardian let the chimp in to see the tigers, but tried to push him into the cages. The tiger tried to attack both, so Bipp did the only thing he could think of: a Monty Python skit to confuse the keeper and tiger with British humor, long enough to grab a handful of hair (at least 13 strands) and run the hell away. Lucky for them, the tiger killed and partially ate the keeper, so by the time it caught up to the golf cart, it had already research the spaceship/time machine..

A few calculations and the craft arrived, to 15 minutes before the they had picked up packet. Two minutes after their past versions had picked up the packets, the future, er, current version walked back up to claim their prize.

They spent their winnings at an off-campus bar, which was fortuitous, as numerous screams and explosions spread across the campus till the wee hours of the morning... more so than normal.

It was going to be an interesting semester.

Although I have a giant list compiled for things I want in an IOU game, like Joss Whedon, radioactive spittoons, and ninjas flying up from the basement, I eschewed all that to try a one page adventure for East Texas University. ETU isn't as high powered as IOU, but it works nicely. Numerous binding spells and elder signs were failing at the same time, so the administration decided to have each scavenger hunt team search for different components for the different rituals. The groups finds were more than adequate to keep a Transgendered Demon Lich Squirrel Lord at bay for another thousand years, or was that another thousand likes on his/her Facebook page. Of course, Professor Pittleman has still earned the ire of C.T.H.U.L.H.U. (on a 9+ on 2d6 each session) and Dr WHAT(7) has handled his species in the very special audio series....

About Me

I'm a very happy (and happily married) father of two beautiful little girls named Maja and Amelia. Maja bit the gaming bug with Gnome Wars at the age of two, and has kept going ever since.
I've been at just about every end of the gaming industry (save distribution, I just had connections). Store employee, manager, company demo guy, writer, publisher, reviewer, painter, con staff and organizer.